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On her soapbox this month

Added ( 23-07-2008 )

 

One of our consultants, Jemma Green, has just completed her work on Foolproof's Online Shopping Survey (OSS) into current accounts. She found that comparison sites, that are widely used for other financial products, will not provide value to users until they start including customer review content.

"Throughout the time that we have been running our OSS studies we have observed a growing use of comparison sites. But, comparison sites play different roles in the online shopping processes that are dependant on the product that shoppers are investigating. In our most recent study into current accounts, we found that, whilst comparison sites feature well when consumers are researching the market, they do not provide consumers with sufficient information for them to click through and buy.

These findings should sound a warning to the likes of Moneysupermarket and comparethemarket because unless they can add value to the decision-making process they are not going to earn revenue from the part they play in a sale.

With credit cards and loans, a competitive interest rate is one of the key factors that drives product selection and as such tends to determine a product providers' listing in comparative tables. Whereas, with current accounts, the in-credit rate, whilst comparable across accounts, is not a priority influence in the decision-making process.

Current accounts are far more complex products and are not being catered for sufficiently by comparison sites. Shoppers want to know things like "What's it like to be a customer?" and "What fees will they charge me if I go overdrawn?". Consumers are forced to pay a visit to a bank's web site or even go out of the online environment and into a branch to find out this sort of information.

If comparison sites want to be able to generate revenue from current accounts they need to play a more valuable role in the consumer decision making process. To do this, they need to be able to include content that is generated by real bank customers who will be able to inform people of what it's really like to be a customer. Customer experience is the thing that online shoppers are looking for. To that end, we fully expect the consolidation of comparison content, consumer review, ratings sites and expert review sites. Those sites that start to combine these types of content will dominate the sector as centres for consumer decision-making.

Incorporating review and rating content will make comparison sites more authoritative than providers' own sites which will lead them to being the natural centre of gravity for shoppers. This should position them well to generate increased revenues from the click through sales they will then be able to achieve."

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